大象传媒

I lived just 16 miles south of london. In 1940 during the Batlle of Britain and the Blitz I was 11 and nearly didnt make it to 12. as on 3 occasions i had very lucky escapes. the first was that each Sunday morning I normally joined a friend in his shelter during the air raid to read his comics, but on this particular morning something made us suddenly afraid so we ran to my shelter to be with my mother about 400 yds away. within about 5 minutes of leaving a bomb (part of a stick trying for the local viaduct,hit a pile of tarmac stones in a council yard and filled my friends shelter completly full. Second, a few weeks later after a raid and more bombs we found a hole in the road, thinking it to be a norman bomb hole we played in it until the council came to fill it up. at 3am the next morning there was an enormous explosion that blew in all our windows, apparantly the hole had contained about a 500lb delayed action bomb leaving a hole in the road big enough for a full sized house. and thirdly one morning some weeks later at my grandmothers near Tonbridge in Kent we saw a large silver cylinder with a parachute lying in the field opposite, so being boys we played on it until the soldiers came, they cleared us off and evacuated all the local houses while they defused a 1000lb delayed action mine that was apparentlt ticking. When I was 18 I joined the Royal Marines and spent much of my service in Commando units. I had a good grounding.

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